Pick up the gavels and get to work

That is why it is disappointing that the National Assembly went on a recess barely a month of being elected. Given the myriad of challenges facing the nation, this portrays Nigeria as a very unserious country especially when compared to other parliaments around the globe that are rising up to their nations’ predicaments and proffering […]

That is why it is disappointing that the National Assembly went on a recess barely a month of being elected. Given the myriad of challenges facing the nation, this portrays Nigeria as a very unserious country especially when compared to other parliaments around the globe that are rising up to their nations’ predicaments and proffering solutions to the executive. Methinks the two chambers should have deliberated on the state of the nation from the perspective of the National Assembly at that point, and taken the initiative to give President Muhammadu Buhari an input for take-off. Imagine the mundane issues addressed and settled for the record – wardrobe allowance, and election of principal officers. Just these two tasks and recess was called. This is not right, and is certainly unworthy of not only the time spent, the costs to the nation’s empty treasury.
One cannot be unmindful of the obstacles that may have forced a recess, given the fisticuffs that broke out on the floor of the House and the jungle approach to politics in modern Nigeria. Why would a party try to force candidates on the nation’s democratic institutions – akin to the PDP gambit to short-circuit the due process of internal democracy and the rule of the majority.
Saraki and Dogara though members of the ruling All Progressives Congress are considered as bona fide Peoples Democratic Party descendants, and the National Working Committee of the APC is frustrated that its preferences of who should have been Senate President and House Speaker could not emerge. But was it a surprise? It was no surprise that the duo of Saraki and Dogara had sprang their victory the way of the political cunning that they did. Hear Saraki in a recent interview; “I worked hard for my election, I had direct contact with every single Senator, one on one; weeks leading to the election I did not rely on anybody. I worked hard; both in our party, the APC and out of it. I approached every Senator, I talked to them…we built confidence, not only in the APC, but, also, in the PDP. I talked to them”. This is democracy in practice. Once legislators are elected, the hold of the party on them thins out enabling the Legislature to operate as a counterbalance to party dictates. As Saraki correctly points out, it was the absence of anti Saraki APC Senators in the chamber that ensured the emergence of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as his deputy. The APC sees this as an unbearable effrontery and would rather upset the whole applecart, accusing the PDP of something close to treason. It is either our collective memory is short or typically Nigerian, we are unable to receive the rough tackles we give.
Flash back to 2011 and recall how in almost similar dramatic fashion, Tambuwal became Speaker of the House of Representatives. Then the APC was proud to admit and even gloat in the euphoria of its capability to determine the outcome of the election of principal officers in the National Assembly. Today, the shoe is on the other foot and APC (or those who think they have power to impose choices) is limping in pain and throwing up childish tantrums. We should do well to, and it is in the National interest to so do. Imagine Chief Bisi Akande making allegations to the effect that the debacle at the National Assembly is owed to the long hand of oil and subsidy cabals. Speaker Yakubu Dogara has since dismissed the allegation as spurious and unfounded, insisting that his election was based on his “integrity and antecedents of capacity, experience, team playing, incorruptibility, and progressive mindset”.
One expected a deliberation on the way forward given the precarious condition of the economy and the grave consequences of the wage failure nationwide.  Austerity measures which go beyond the cosmetics of reduction in already bogus jumbo pay for legislators should have been critically discussed and positions taken that address an appropriate response to the national situation. As a matter of fact, even a resolution calling for a broad national policy of belt tightening measures that dealt with the fiscal implication of bogus and outlandish emoluments and entitlements of political office holders, including Emirs and Chiefs, would have been most appropriate.
On National security, even as we speak, the spine of  the Boko Haram terror and insurgency has not yet been broken, even as President Muhammadu Buhari is clearly building a gauntlet of stakeholder nations to confront the menace. The spate of suicide bombings and deadly Boko Haram raids for food and supplies have not abated in spite of the obvious weakening of the muscle of the insurgents. Millions of internally displaced persons are unable to return to their liberated homes, and are making do through the Ramadan as displaced persons in their own country. The National Assembly acts as if oblivious of all of these challenges. This should not have been so.
Whatever happened to the battle cry of change that they claim determined the defeat of the Peoples Democratic Party? This is the question running in the minds of majority of Nigerians who voted massively for President Muhammadu Buhari and are watching in horrid angst as beneficiaries of the Buhari cyclone appear to be attracted by the same old corrupt tendencies and the lust for lucre that bedeviled the Goodluck Jonathan administration to its doom. It is time for the twain of the Presidency and the Legislature in this new dispensation to meet, come to terms with the challenge and the spirit of the age, in order to advance the national cause. On this, President Muhammadu Buhari from all indications has his thumb dead right on the pulse. Will the other estates of the power realm be a drag? God forbid.